As two new stories suggest — the New York Times on Jack Kerouac‘s role in the transformation of his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, and the Guardian‘s look at a previously unreleased collaboration between Kerouac and William Burroughs — the Beats remain the evergreens of postwar American lit, which prompted us to look back at two pieces by our editors-at-large about the echoes of the Beat generation: Anthony Frewin on the whitewashing of Kerouac biographer Gerry Nicosia, as well as Nile Southern on the literary legacies of Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. The beat marches on.